Community: The Inbound Resource You Forgot&nbspAbout

The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Remember a time when “community” meant the neighborhood or town you lived in? Or when a business only had to be concerned with making customers happy when they were inside their store? It’s sometimes hard to remember what life was like before online communities became such commonplace. But the fact of the matter is that online communities are where we spend most of our time these days (especially if you're in search marketing... #amiright?).

We talk a lot about Inbound Marketing and how it encompasses areas such as SEO, Social Media, content, blogging, email, Public Relations and Q&A/forums (among others). Now, let me ask you this: What's the one thing that all of those have in common? (You probably know where I'm going here) That's right, Community.

Ok, I admit it, I'm surely a bit biased here. However, I really want you to think about this. At the base of everything we do as marketers, our community (whoever that may be for your particular organization) is right there, standing tall.

The Value of Community

What does "community" mean to you? Or perhaps a better question should actually be: What should "community" mean to you? I want you to think about the people who visit your site, participate in your forums, and buy your products or comment on your Facebook wall. They are the people who you want to find you in the SERPs, who you send emails to giving them discounts and they're the ones you hope will retweet and share your content. You write for them, you create products for them and you (may) want money from them. Yep, they're pretty damn important.

Determining the actual value of your community isn't so cut and dry. Sure, we all want to put a dollar value to everything, but you can start with these steps:

1. Figure out who the community is in your organization.

Who are your community members, what do they care about, why does it matter, where do they hang out, and how are you going to interact with them? Are they the people who participate in the forum on your site? Are they the ones who read your blog? Are they the people who buy your products? Are they all of the above?

You can get this information in a number of ways:

Look at your analytics! Where are your users coming from, and where are they going next? What keywords are they searching for to find you? Who are they based on demographics?

Facebook Insights. If you're active on Facebook why not dig into your user data and see if it matches up with your analytics.

Dig into your own data. Do you require sign up on your site? Do you ask for gender or any other useful information that can help you determine who your community members are?

2. Figure out what your community really cares about.

Do they care about sharing your content? Will they spend endless hours in your forums? Perhaps they just want a daily email update from you (never to hear from you otherwise). But how do you figure out what they care about?

Ask. It never hurts to ask. Add a poll to your site, send them an email, or ask them on your social channels. We do this all the time here at Moz and getting feedback from the community helps us grow!

3. Determine how much time/energy/money you're putting into your community.

Think about where you're putting your resources. Do you spend your time creating blog posts? How much time do you want to devote to social media? Is someone managing social media full time? What about SEO and content? Do you pay outside contractors to help in the forums or write content for you?

You want to know this, so you can then determine if you're spending resources in the right areas (see next step ;-).

4. Are you spending your time/energy on the things your community actually cares about?

Boom. You've figured out who the community is, what they care about and how you're currently spending your time. Now you can determine if you're utilizing your resources well.

You want to know if you are wasting time creating blog posts (that no one is reading), because they care more about writing their own content. Do you scour the internet looking for content to share on Twitter, only to realize your community doesn't really get into Twitter. Should you focus your energy on beefing up your emails because your members like to get info that way?

5. Rinse and repeat.

This isn't a one-time process. You need to constantly be thinking about how you can leverage your community in the right ways. Don't stop simply because you found something that works for now. The biggest takeaway here is also that you need to determine what works for YOU. You can read all about how others manage communities, but it's up to you to set your own course.

Here at SEOmoz, our community is always on top of mind as we develop software, create resources and share content. We believe strongly in keeping our community alive, strong and continually growing. We want to challenge you, please you, help you and whenever possible, make you laugh. So what is the value of the SEOmoz community? This is the best part, it’s invaluable. Because without our amazing community, we’re just another software company. But as you well know, we’re more than that, and that’s because of you. (Can we say "job security")?

Community Resources

Before I let you go work on determining the value of your community, I wanted to give you some great resources on building, managing and keeping a strong community:

#cmgrchat - This is a great chat that runs every Wednesday at 2pm Eastern. They have different topics each week, and I've learned a ton participating.

My Community Manager - Holds a weekly Google+ Hangout on Friday's at 2pm Eastern where they discuss various aspects of community management. This Friday, I'll actually be talking about why SEO is important to Community Managers. :) (My worlds COLLIDE!)

Ok. Now it's up to you! I'd love to hear how you value the community and the steps you've taken to figure that out. Do you think I've missed anything or should add any steps? Why is community important to you?

By the way, I'll actually be talking about Community Management as a part of Inbound Marketing at Mozcon this year. I hope to see you there!

Nice post - I honestly hadn't thought about hecklers as being part of the community of a business but it makes complete sense. My mission is always to make the biggest hecklers the best brand advocates by over the top reputation management/customer service that really turns any situation around. If they've bothered to shout negatively about a business I'm sure I can make them shout positively!

Point 4 is by far the most important though, if your creating a load of duff content that you audience isn't interested in what's the point!

Exactly! I think often times we spend too much time focusing on what we think we should focus on, or what the latest craze is. But we're not first determining if our community even cares about that.

I've always thought of the hecklers as a part of the community. I think of our community as a large family and in it you have people you only see once a year, people you can't wait to spend time with every day, and that one uncle that shows up and complains the whole time. :) It's the same with a community, you still need them around to keep the group whole.

Investing in communities online is a key to any strategy going well, from my experieince you really have to engage with your key audience you have to use social monitoring tools to find your key community memebers and or products such as http://followerwonk.com to locate these brand ambasadtors.

I have worked on some interesting projects recently where you actually have the community working for you from the link building front. After our investigations into one brand we work on we found a user who had uploaded around 500 videos from our brand, videos we already host online, they had good PR per video and 100's of thousands of views. Rather then going to him with the attitude to take them down or be sued like soo many companies do, with approval form legal we said hey we realise that you have used our content please do not do this, we will allow them to stay online but can you please add links to all content as a source/ citation of our brands content, this individual added the 500 links in under a week, we sent him some wireless headphones to say thanks. I feel it was a case where you can take two options: Otpion 1 - Sue the guy and make him even more angry towards the brand, or. Option 2 - Ask him to help build your social media/SEO and do work for you.

What an excellent post Jen! Working alongside you every day, I often forget what a great writer you are, in addition to your community growth/management skills.

I agree that community should be considered a huge part of marketing. The success we've had over search + social are primarily results of the community here on Moz (and the broader marketing world). All those shares, links, likes, +1s, email subscribers, etc. come (by and large) from community members.

From now on, whenever I talk about inbound marketing, I'm adding community to the list of primary channels/practices along with content, search, social, analytics + CRO.

Thanks Sha, I'm excited that's what I'll be talking about at Mozcon, as that's what gets me excited to come to work every day. :) I've only found those resources recently (like past 9 months to more recently) so I'm happy to share them!

Sadly, you'll never be able to get everyone to participate as there are some people who will never get out of that lurker stage. But the more ways you ask and reach out, the better chance you have to capture as many opinions as possible.

Nice post, Jennita. I really love all the stuff you write about. If there's something remarkable in your writings is the ability of making the reading enjoyable. Repeat: I really love all the stuff you write about.

The resources you provide us are of an extremely high quality. Thank you very much.

Sure I think there is such a thing as too much solicitation. I'm not sure that once per month is too much though. It definitely depends on your community and how they interact but I'd think a new poll once a month seems pretty good! I like asking questions on Facebook and I do it fairly randomly. We'll also post questions/polls/etc. on the blog now and then. We don't have a strict schedule, we just do it when it feels necessary to make a good decision.

Ok I realise I'm a bit late to this party, but...I heard a great story from a friend who works for a high-end guitar company, they make a lot of guitars, particularly acoustics.Anyway, they read a couple of posts on a forum from a guy who was rubbishing their products. So they managed to contact him and discovered that he was not too far from them in California. So the head of marketing contacted him and asked if he could come round with some guitars.The guy said yes, and was blown away when the marketing guy turns up with a dozen different guitars for him to try. No sales talk, just try them and sat down and talked guitars.The guy became a customer and loves the guitars and tells his friends.All the marketing guy did was take time to explain how they made their guitars, the wood, the bracing etc - all the lovely important stuff to guitar players.I realise that this is very offline stuff and cannot be scaled, but reaching out in this way really works.Just two guys hanging out talking about stuff they love.But this sort of stuff travels - after all I'm writing about a guitar company from California on a website devoted to seo and marketing.

A+ post. Identifying, building, and maintaining a brand's community is so essential. I tweeted this earlier from Godin's blog: "Figure out the people part and the technology gets a whole lot simpler."

No brand is too big or too small for its community. The notion of 'word of mouth' is so largely forgotten...and it starts from forming relations.

Quick example. - I'm a frequent coffehouse flyer. In my present geograph I have a number of options. The first week I was here, a store owner noticed a 'new face,' sat down next to me, and began inquiring about my career, interests, etc. I expressed how welcome he made me feel. He said, "Of course I'm interested. You're my customer." It was said so matter-of-factly. I was like, "This guy gets it." He also gets my business on the regular (and that of many others.. must be the coffee..haha)

However, I got a bit distracted by Geoff Kenyon's 'How to Get Your Community to Build Links For You' post you linked to :P Even though that post is a year and a half old, it's fantastic reading, thanks for sharing that.

Right?! That's why I had to link to it. I remember when he wrote it, I was so excited by it. No one seems to see the community as a way to build links, but there are tons of ways. I'm glad that's what distracted you. :)

Interesting post Jen. Hecklers, I really didn't think of them as part of a community, but you are right. Even in my little local community where I live, there are those hecklers, or grumpy old neighbors...

I was impressed Jen. There are certain aspects you need to focus on whenever you’re running an online business. As a businessman, you are aware of the risks involved in running a business. Your highlighted points were very helpful. Knowing the value of a community is the best start doing an Online Marketing.Nice piece.

I almost missed this post but thanks to Gianluca Fiorelli for sharing it on G+ and I would highly agree with his comment the on G+ ‘Queen of Social Media’ she really is!

You really cover all the points where an owner/marketing team should focus when thinking about online channels! The point that strikes my mind like anything is, ‘figure out what community cares about!’

This actually classifies the difference between producing something for community and producing something for a community that it cares about! May be your content is good but if it is not what your target community is looking for it still not going to benefit you! So before even you create the content you should have a clear idea about what your target community love!